1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a distance measuring apparatus and method, as well as an offerable medium for providing program code to implement the apparatus and method. More particularly, the present invention relates to a distance measuring apparatus and method for measuring the distance to an object based on a reflected beam from the object.
2. Description of the Related Art
A distance measuring method is known with which the distance to an object is measured by irradiating a laser beam to the object and measuring a time from the emission of the laser beam to the arrival of a reflected beam. There is also known another distance measuring method of measuring the amount of a laser beam reflected by an object and determining the distance to the object, as disclosed in PCT International Publications WO97/0111, WO97/0112 and WO97/0113, for example.
With the above latter related art, however, it is difficult to achieve precise measurement of the distance because the reflectivity of the object for the laser beam is not taken into consideration.
The above former related art has a problem as follows. When measuring the distance to an object having a predetermined size, the laser beam requires to be scanned over the whole of the object. Accordingly, the time at which the distance is measured differs for each point on the object, and therefore the distance to a moving object cannot be precisely measured.